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VOWING AND PAYING

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 19, 1869

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 33, No. 4.

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VOWING AND PAYING.

By Henry F. Phelps

“BETTER not to vow, than to vow, and not pay.” How many who read these lines have vowed, and not paid? How many promised at the last prayer-meeting to be more diligent, watchful, prayerful, careful of their conversation, &c., &c., and that of their own accord? Have you done as you promised? How many while in adverse circumstances have vowed that if God would spare, they would be more faithful! Have you paid those vows? How many while sitting and listening to some soul-stirring discourse, have decided that they would be Christians! Did you become such? How many have decided that they would keep God’s holy Sabbath better! Have you done it? How many have decided that they would be more faithful to their children; but have they done as they ought in this direction? Kind reader, these questions apply to you. Answer them as you will some day wish you had, not by word only, but in deed and in truth. Be decided. Make up your mind that you will, and then do it.
Now I will ask another question, and the reader may judge to whom it applies. I wish to know something about s. B. How many are very much behind in their vows in this respect? And again, how many have vowed upon a vow, that is, have promised themselves (and the Lord heard them) that as soon as they received pay for this or that job of work, or got their threshing done, or their grain marketed, the very first money they got, they would pay their tithe to the Lord. Have you done it? or have you paid Cæsar first? God wants a people who will not only vow, but vow and pay. Oh! listen to the words of the prophet, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of Heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Mal. iii, 10. “Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice, and the heavens shall declare his righteousness; for God is judge himself.” Ps. l, 3-6.
HENRY F. PHELPS.
Pine Island, Minn.